


An Answer In Her

by PrioritiesSorted



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Declarations Of Love, F/M, post-adwd, sort of, this is Jaime Lannister we're talking about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 20:19:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/pseuds/PrioritiesSorted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, he would wonder why it took him so long to realise he loved her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Answer In Her

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to congratsyouvegrownasoul for fixing this story and the wailing mess that was me while attempting to write it. My semi-colons and I owe you our sanity. 
> 
> You wouldn't think so few words would cause so much torment, yet these few managed it.

Later, he would wonder why it took him so long to realise he loved her. Why, after all they’d been through, was the vision of her, scarred and bruised and broken, the one that brought epiphany crashing down.

The answer, of course, was simple; for all that he had seen and done and felt in his short life, Jaime Lannister had never known what it was to fall in love. He had been born loving Cersei, after all, as a brother before he was her lover. Despite what she’d become, he knew that he would love her always; she was his twin and the mother of his children, whatever manner of children they were.

How was he then to know why his chest began to tighten when he thought of Brienne coming to harm, or why thoughts of desire swiftly turned to thoughts of her. The idea was ludicrous. What a pair they would make: the enormous, ugly girl and the cynical old cripple. Where she was as close to a True Knight as one could be, he had forsaken his own honour when he was barely more than a child.

But he knew well that a perfect idea rarely spelled a perfect reality. When they were children, he and Cersei had envisaged their future; the golden queen with her shining knight at her side. They had never thought of the Kings, not Mad Kings or Stag Kings or the King they made together, who was worse than both. The Kings were their reality, and the reality was ugly; it made them ugly.

Far from the absurdity of the idea, the reality of Brienne was sublime. Not in the physicality, as Cersei had been, but in the way she changed him, saved him, raised him. He had never put faith in the Seven, but he prayed for her; he had never told anyone the truth about the Mad King, but he told her; he had never really looked at women who weren’t Cersei, yet he could not help but notice those eyes, calm and wide, bluer and more fathomless than the sea.

They were the only beautiful thing about her, in truth, but they were enough to make him stop. Even when he had thought he hated her, even when his every thought was with Cersei, it was those eyes that caught his curiosity. Once he was curious, he was lost. She was a senseless thing, he decided, yet he could not help looking for an answer in her.

Perhaps he was done for by the time they left Harrenhal, perhaps it was the sight of her standing awkwardly in his chambers wearing that blue dress, endearing when he knew he should have found it absurd. In either case, the newness of the feeling took him aback. It wasn’t burning; he was not aflame with desire, with a need for her as he had been for his sister. It was drowning; slow but sure as she leaked through the cracks, filling him up until he had no choice but surrender.

And surrender he did, fleeing from his duty, even from his family, for the honour of a dead woman, and for hers. He knew she was lying to him (he read it in her eyes; they betrayed her just as they had him). He knew it as surely as he knew what a lie meant, coming from her, yet somewhere on the road between Riverrun and King’s Landing, he had lost the ability to refuse her. He knew he ought to regard that as an evil; the things he’d done for Cersei, for his father, even for Tyrion, would haunt him if he hadn’t given up on ghosts when he was seventeen. Somehow, though, this did not feel the same. It was not a duty, not a need to protect the grotesque tangles of his family; it was a choice, a deep rooted trust that wherever she led him would be a step along the road to what little redemption he could grasp.

Later, what felt like a thousand steps down that road that led further and further North, when there was little else to think of but the cold in his bones, he found himself asking,

“Did you think I would hate you for taking me to her?”

“Yes” she replied simply, tugging her thick cloak further around herself.

“I almost did, for a while.” He admitted, “But not for the act itself, I understood that. I was angry that you lied to me, as though you thought I wouldn’t go with you if I knew the reason why.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, but he shrugged it off.

“Oh, I forgave you almost instantly. Who am I to claim judgement? Besides, it’s you.”

He shouldn’t have expected her to understand; after a lifetime of male ridicule his backhand declaration was hardly going to penetrate the layers of self-doubt she had built around herself like a second armour. It was therefore predictable (if frustrating) that she looked more confused than delighted as she asked,

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that if we’d lived through this whole ordeal, if we weren’t going to die tomorrow or the day after, I probably would have married you, if you’d have had me.”

The silence was absolute. Any background noise there might have been was swallowed by the vast expanse of snow.

“Oh” she said softly. He chanced a look at her; no trace of emotion showed on her face, but they flew through her eyes faster than he could read them. It was unbearable.

“I know you’ve a history of beating old hedge knights who wish to wed you into the ground, but I thought you might spare one who-“

He had planned to say “was fond of you” but he had never lied to her before, and these might be his last hours,

“-loves you.”

Silence again. He was beginning to wonder if his admission had been so shocking that she had dropped dead then and there, when she spoke.

“When I was thirteen, I swore that I would wed no man who could not defeat me with a sword. I imagine you could have, once, so I think I could make an exception for one who- for one I loved.”

He wanted a thousand things, then; to kiss her chapped lips, hold her scarred body in his crippled arms, take her calloused hand in his remaining one and run as south as south went and further. Instead, he heaved a great sigh and said,

“I suppose that means I will have to live.”

He heard the smile in her voice as she replied,

“Yes, I suppose we will.”

Later, he would wonder why it took him so long to realise he loved her.


End file.
